alexander mccurry in london he is a writer on legal affairs and an analyst and a watch then we cross to marc morano he is the publisher of climate depot and a former staffer of the us senate environment and public works committee or a gentleman crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime on alexander if i go to you first in london i was reading the daily mail a couple of days ago and they had an article about greenpeace and russia and the arctic or oil platform and i must say that the article was what rather pro greenpeace and very anti russian and then i read the seventy or so comments at the end of the article and my goodness the article was very much out of touch with whoever wrote the article and the editorial line of that publication a lot of people thought that greenpeace has gone too far it's a publicity stunt they made sure there were so many different kinds of nationalities on that operation to get maximum media effect what do you think about this i mean because greenpeace is doing this for publicity obviously to what degree

it's doing it for science and environmentalism we can discuss go ahead here is what greenpeace is a direct action organization they've been doing these sorts of things to a very very long time what way back into the nineteenth certainties and i think it's true to say that it's always been controversial an awful lot of people both within and outside the ecological movement are skeptical about some of the things that greenpeace does and i think some of the things that you probably saw some of the comments you saw to that daily mail article reflect that having said that it is if you look it has always seen itself as being at the vanguard of ecological of the ecological campaigning and what he did in the arctic with the gas from platform is consistent with that an idea that this is the first time greenpeace has come in for this sort of criticism perhaps what is rather more surprising is that the daily mail should support green. peace rather than rush that's another so you should

support peace on this occasion usually the daily mail isn't very keen greenpeace's bozo no well i can see the day when it was you very rarely keen on russia a mark of language to you i mean it again you know and greenpeace it seems that even popular perception of popular perception is that it is more of a action group political action group and less and less an environmental group yes it's chiefly known the last couple decades now is just an environmental pressure group who's basically sole existence at this point are cheap publicity stunts and this kind of what you'd call you know you could almost border on eco terror is the phrase i would use or just trespassing and lawbreaking you know just in august they went and destroyed golden rice crops and i philippines they destroyed a whole trial test of them they don't have the concept of property rights they don't have the concept of legality the former head of the former co-founding member patrick moore the ecologist has come out and basically said greenpeace is acting

immoral and he left the organization back in the eighty's because greenpeace at that point was opposed to chlorinated water and some of the greater public health advancements so i think given what's happened with greenpeace it's almost become even in our pop culture it's becoming more and more sort of the butt of a joke it's an ex it's known as an extreme organization among the environmental pressure groups it's by known as one of the most extreme next to some of you know the other ones like the animal liberation front all that but it's getting out there and i think what russia has done hair is send a very clear signal that they're going to play a no nonsense game with greenpeace perhaps the pirate pirates charges are a little bit much but certainly not the other charges the trespassing and violations and it's very interesting to see greenpeace wet hair let's just hope that what happened with france a few years back france did that get sunk the original ship the greenpeace head but then they were. forced by

a tribunal to pay eight million dollars to pay for it let's hope that doesn't happen with russia stick to your guns here alexander one of the things i mean i guess kind of all of it all of us are kind of children of greenpeace when i look at our of it when i look at our ages here i mean i have nothing against you know greenpeace stopping people killing baby seals and protecting dolphins and porpoises i mean i are we all like that ok because we think that senseless here but isn't this really just a promotion and you have to go to the next extreme to get more money from donors it makes you feel good inside that you know you're helping these people that are helping baby seals essentially what can i just say i think we should be careful what language you use i don't think what happened in the arctic is eco terrorism or any sort of terrorism and i think i think we should be very precise about this now i agree the russian authorities felt very strongly that they need to make a very strong point here and entirely see why development of the arctic is very

much in russia's economic interests russia is entirely within its rights legally to do what it is doing in its in the arctic and there's no question at all in my opinion that what greenpeace did is it broke the law and greenpeace does regularly deliberately break the law and are not certainly someone who generally countenances breaking the law having said that greenpeace generally has been fairly careful to balance to know how far to go with these sorts of things and i and i feel that with this particular incident in the arctic it again. when perhaps further than it should have been legally but it didn't really do anything particularly violent whole or extremely criminal and i think on the other side the russian authorities understand that perfectly well which is why i think each side now having made its

point there will come there will be there will come a solution and we will probably see the charges reduced possibly these people pleading guilty to these lower let lesser charges and then this particular incident will close and we will move on mark i think it's very personal and i tend to agree with you but mark you know i think another part of the story that is so missed in mainstream media and i haven't seen it really reported in any depth at all is that greenpeace did this in august two thousand to twelve also and that time on the platform they got almost no resistance that the oil workers here didn't know what to do there wasn't much security at all and they were there for fifteen hours with their posters and everything like that and then they finally left of their own volition and well what there's a learning curve here if they come and try to do that again we will show them what they can expect and i think this is part of the thing if i go to market i think this is part of the strategy as well mark because this is what the what happened

before will not be repeated again and as was pointed out this is a very important strategic industry for russia go ahead mark. yeah or else the strategic for everyone at this point and i think i want to agree with alexander i'm not alleging what they did here on this platform with the eco terror i'm referring to or what the co-founder patrick moore said what they did at the crops the golden rice crops in the philippines in august that is more along the lines of eco terror but yes i mean what greenpeace is getting a curve here what they've tried to do over the decades is pick cheap easy politically expedient targets where they're not going to get a lot of blowback and i don't think they counted on russia i don't think they count on your government being prepared and doing this to them and i think alexander's by right again and that the charges will probably be dropped or at least they'll plead to lesser charges here and i don't think the piracy is going to hold but i think the idea of the message behind what greenpeace is doing is what patrick moore the

founding member has said this is an anti human agenda oil is the lifeblood of our modern civilization greenpeace is on record as trying to stop carbon based energy fossil fuels in the developing world where one point six or so billion people don't have running water electricity don't have access to this this is the real question why are wealthy white environmentalists and by the way a whole coalition of minority groups have accused greenpeace and other environmental groups of being largely white and being essentially exclusionary racist organizations why are they denying carbon based energy the lifeblood of modern developed world to the people at barely subsistence level and i think that's the larger question here sure it's a cheap publicity stunt to jump on a russian oil rig and make this point but why are they against oil and how does this do for the for the powerless people the developing world who don't have the

voices don't have running water don't have electricity have high infant mortality rates have short life expectancy this is where greenpeace is on the wrong side of history and on the wrong. morality alexander if i go back to you again i mean it's kind of a cheap stuff because these are these live pictures when you see these pictures of the oil rig in it and you know and you have the activists this is how they generate money isn't it this is what they get from their donors. well of course i mean that is the nature of an organization like this sort in a direct action organization has to perform direct action if it is going to continue to get support and continue to get money and i mean there are a lot of criticisms of what greenpeace does a lot of people feel that greenpeace does overstep the mark and in fact that the reactions that it provokes are actually negative for the ecological movement generally up i think there's two points i want to make firstly you are absolutely

right to point out to the pre the previous incident the russian authorities are not going to allow people like greenpeace to enter the arctic and harass the people who are doing their work there that that's absolutely clear and that's what the russian authorities were setting out to say on this occasion and they've done it very very convincingly and i think yes greenpeace which is also any sophisticated organization will understand this now greenpeace is an ecological body wants to wants to argue that there are problems of development in the arctic that's a legitimate point or whatever view one has about oil and the necessity of oil and carbon and and the rest that there is or there is a delicate ecosystem in the arctic and they know they are they have a legitimate grounds to be concerned about that i think what has happened is i want to know just let me jump in here gentlemen we have we're going to work towards

a very careful getting out of that ignoring we'll continue our discussion on greenpeace stay with our. new york review of. live .

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welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle two minds who were discussing greenpeace. ok michael michael back to you in washington i agree with what alexander had to say about being concerned about the environment in the arctic that's that's fair enough maybe it's the issue of tactic. but you know why isn't a greenpeace more interested in like fukushima in japan or what's going on in the gulf of mexico i don't see they have a lot of activity going there or maybe they'd be afraid of the response of the governments involved and they learned a lesson i think we all would agree that you're not going to mess with russia when it's doing its legitimate business operations in a particular part of the world go ahead yes you have not seen them with hugo chavez

in venezuela you haven't seen them go after iran for nuclear you haven't seen them when the saddam hussein was burning the oil fields you didn't see greenpeace activists in the one nine hundred ninety s. going into iraq and making any protests there they're looking for cheap easy points with very little blowback unfortunately they may have picked the wrong target here and yes obviously the arctic is a sensitive environmental area but the point is greenpeace would oppose it whether it's the gulf of mexico whether it's in russia or whether it's in the arctic whether it's just about anywhere they're going to oppose this and the technology by the way for arctic drilling is dramatically improved and safer the footprints are smaller so the argument really isn't about the are arctic ecosystem for greenpeace it's about oil they're having a war on modern energy and they want to remake our society into this so-called renewable energy of solar and wind and you don't hear greenpeace going after windmills that are slaughtering birds you don't hear them going after solar panels

that are going into sensitive environmental areas like the mojave desert they are very politically careful when they do this and i think what i mentioned earlier that greenpeace is on the edge there's a poll here in america that says people even if they care about the environment don't like the image of environmentalists so they don't call themselves environmentalist and one of the large reasons is the antics of greenpeace is the face of modern environmentalism they pioneered it and people are turning off to it in these kind of tactics it's interesting alexander franco to you in london i mean greenpeace itself is a corporation. well it's not it's not very it's not very transparent and it has many branches all over the world but some countries and its finances are very very closed in they've been under a lot of investigation in two thousand and five by the way the f.b.i. investigated them for having possible connection with eco terrorists not a very open operation. but i have sure that i'm sure that's true.

the question it seems to me though is if we if we come back to this particular incident which is was this. different from the sort of things that greenpeace has historically done and i don't really think it was what i think is really interesting about this particular thing is yes russia in some ways is now a vulnerable target for this kind of activity the reason russia is a vulnerable target with these these sort of activities is precisely because russia is becoming a legally legally orderly a fairly open society you can't operate in countries which are dictatorships for fairly obvious reasons it can only operate in countries like democracies like russia and the important thing is that russia is responding to this in i think a rather skillful and actually rather sophisticated way they say look we will not

let our people be harassed at the same time we're going to actually use the courts and the law and counter to what some people say i would say that the actual legal case against greenpeace under article two to seven of the russian criminal codes is actually quite a strong one i can see that there are defenses there but it is a legal response to a challenge ok a more market i go back to you i mean it certainly is a challenge here i mean greenpeace want to go i don't i with gazprom russia's energy company here and it looks like this time gazprom is one that's one out here under the under law and it looks like greenpeace here has blinked. calculated this time. oh i think they absolutely did the fact that they're still detained the fact that their boats been seized i think this is not what they expected they expected a slap on the wrist to go about their business and this is all about their fund raising letters they want to send these modeline sappy appeals to people in the

mail saying here's what we did we must stop this stop russian arctic drilling immediately people write a big check this complicates the issue makes greenpeace look like they may have overstepped so it's not the best p.r. thing unless they can try to demonize russia and claim they're at the hands of you know putin and they're being unfairly treated which i haven't you know i haven't seen yet the piracy charges i mentioned might be wrong but i think most likely and most likely drop yes i agree so i think what's going to happen here is greenpeace you know their president one of their executive directors just recently came out sure go ahead mark finish up go ahead. go one of their executive directors came out and said that this they're going to put their lives on the line for climate justice in his words climate justice so they're sounding in some ways more defiant i was at the keystone pipeline protest here in washington d.c. there were protesters with banners saying we will stop the canadian pipeline to the

u.s. by any means necessary and i interviewed him so there's a strain of the environmental movement that's getting more and more radicalized against fossil fuels and i think russia taking these measures today to sending a message that at least i'm not going to take these p.r. stunts that greenpeace is doing because they may end up at sort of that slippery slope they may end up leading to more serious attacks by other more extreme green groups exactly alexander you want to jump in go ahead you see. yeah what i wanted to say is i think the point that mark mark is making about you know the carbon issues is actually an interesting one because i think partly what's been happening is that a couple of years ago five or six years ago a global warming carbon issue all of these things were very much at the top of the global political agenda with the economic crisis and with all kinds of other problems going on around the world that's fallen back

a bit and i think what we are seeing is a certain escalation on the part of certain sections of the ecological movement with greenpeace being somewhat in the vanguard of trying if you like to try to increase again the attention that this issue is getting and i think some of the overblown language in it is in fact consistent with that however one must always be careful to distinguish between what people say and what they actually do it's one thing for them to say we're going to do anything to stop something happening. provided they remain within the law. you know people will say things but one shouldn't go off to them unless they break the law if they go if they do great little then it is the law ought to be used to deal with them which is what we see in russia now and i think as i said i come back

to this until the russians have handled this matter well and an extraordinary contrast if you like to what happened way back in the 1980's when the french responded yes he's a talented greenpeace by planting bombs in. boats and killing people and doing terrible things or if in some ways the russians would have been wrong to have arrested this ship before being on the high seas before they did anything they waited for them to do something they then acted and in fact they're acting in a legal way and i think that's something that we should note and commend and recognize you know market it's creepy thing competition with these other groups because it seems to be you know there's a limited amount of publicity you can get there and greenpeace is making a pitch for a cure because there are far more extreme groups being greenpeace out there yet when the whole environmental pressure groups there was a recent analysis by david horowitz three point five billion dollars i believe

annual is what the size of what we call the big green establishment is and that's a thirty seven to one advantage over your free market groups are seen as a collectively as a free market group sort of in a proposition so this is huge business there's a lot of money and a lot of intense competition so greenpeace has always had the edge of being willing to do the civil disobedience to do the stunts and by the way just a clarification on the french incident from years ago if they had planted bombs in the french government acted in extremely outrageous way i'm not defending what they did in saying that was good i was making a rhetorical point earlier about you know russia had better be careful that it doesn't happen but i think what greenpeace has done this is a ball about fund raising it's all about media attention alexander go ahead in london jump in. you know what i was i was going to say i only of remove the mark was just a fun will do for you to get me to the point of these pieces fall to the very large ecological movement there's a there's a big spectrum of groups within it and greenpeace has always been out in the.

militant edge it is not as militant. as some groups and there are some people within the ecological movement who do go beyond the pale frankly i think greenpeace is actually clever enough to know how far to go most of the un and i think they will on this occasion to you know markedly in going further now only looking at the arctic and other areas here do you think that greenpeace is going to be a little bit more skittish in other groups when they confront countries will say we're going to stand your ground yeah i think they'll be careful i mean and the u.s. they have pretty much free rein they know nothing will happen canada i would say is probably similar any you know western democracy is going to be easy free rein for greenpeace and these kind of stunts the problem really is greenpeace activism has led to things like the world bank now trying to put a moratorium on coal fired power plants in africa president obama is not going to

support coal fired power plants people that need carbon based energy the most to rise out of poverty are getting it and that is to me is the most outrageous thing that greenpeace has done so they go after the most powerless people without a voice without energy basically and they could have the most impact there but i think they're going to continue to do what they do but i think they'll be a little bit more cautious because they don't like this kind of a hiccup especially depending on how it turns out p.r. wise again if greenpeace can demonize the russian government to the point where they were been unjustly they could be the victim hair it may turn out for them in the end i don't think that's going to happen and i didn't we hadn't were ahead of time here about. greenpeace and fund raising here my thanks to my younger son that is all good and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. a next time and remember crops up will. never

leave the place where. there's a. little . place it was a. very hard to take on a plan to get along here a lot has never had sex with her rick perry number. one.

please. please. mother of. the. millions around the globe struggle with hunger each day. what if someone offers a lifetime food supply no charge. they can the very strong position against g.m.o. and we think that's. the genetic anymore the right products are. there is no. evidence to this any problem with genetic engineering when you make a deal. or is free cheese always in

a mouse trap i don't believe that. and that free. enterprise is profit. for social justice golden rice. soldiers you're in the military no more joking any more. never been some time in my life. every day with the story obsolete limits. do you think it's going to be easy. but everyone's desperate. just gets to. say i don't know if i'm going to make it to the end. can stop filming some i'm just a book on the left i don't know what to do. i know c.n.n.

m s n b c on fox news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's closer to the truth and might think. that off. it's because one whole attention in the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on you. and our teen years we have a different brain. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not how. you guys talk to the jokes will handle them.

real damage and complexity of this oil spill was not something you can grasp just by looking at dirty birds we have between four to five million people in this directly affected area of the coast and it's pretty clear why it's not being reported because b.p. can't afford to have a reported all along the gulf coast are clean they are safe and they're open for business if b.p. is the single largest oil contributor to the pentagon the us war machine is heavily reliant upon b.p. and their oil this is a huge step backwards for the marker c. it's a step forward oligarchy carex it is toxic as it looked like spraying in vietnam it was it was not a picture that either the government or b.p. really wanted to have out there i don't want dispersants to be the agent on which.

this is. coming up on our t.v. close sign is still out for the u.s. government both sides here in washington are blaming each other while some much needed services across the country remain shut down so who is really to blame we'll dive into that topic ahead and the giant n.s.a. spy center in utah is quite literally melting down meanwhile here in d.c. congressional scrutiny of the n.s.a. is heating up more on that coming up and in miami florida three police officers face extortion charges they're accused of using the state database to steal personal info of florida residents that story later in today's show. it's wednesday october.